Harris Investment Mgt. Unveils Three Institutional Equity Products

Harris Investment Management is now offering institutional investors a long equity portfolio geared toward the microcap U.S. equity market, an international equity product, and a long/short equity product.

The HIM MicroCap uses the Russell Microcap Index as its benchmark, which as of June 2006 had a capitalization range of approximately $70 million to $650 million.

“For institutional investors, investing in companies of this size presents several challenges, such as liquidity constraints, risk and investment horizon,” said Tom Lettenberger, who helped develop the model behind this product. “With this product, we have found a quantitative process that is quite effective in deciphering the universe and identifying stocks that outperform.”

The HIM International Equity product took off in March and uses a quantitative stock selection model to build the portfolio, and the HIM International Equity Investment Process ranks stocks using fundamental, valuation and investor interest factors.

The HIM 130/30 combines a traditional long equity portfolio with a long/short portfolio composed of 30% leveraged exposure on the long side by selling short 30% of portfolio assets. According to Harris, this method allows moderate shorting to better reflect negative views on stocks that are expected to underperform and to use the short proceeds to further fund overweight stocks that are expected to outperform.